Attempts at Civility
by RarityTheUnicorn
Summary: Three Zuko/Katara FRIENDship oneshots from Katara's POV taking place at the end of Season Three. Kataang and Maiko thrown in for good measure.
1. Chapter 1

I was bending by the fountain trying to clear my head. I felt like I was going to explode if I had to look at his face for one more minute. It seemed like my mind had been on the brink of explosion since the invasion.

How could they all accept him so easily? I understood now that he wasn't going to betray us like he had in Ba Sing Se, but _seriously_? They were just allowing him into our group, laughing at his stupid jokes and trusting him to spar with Sokka.

Then they all treated me like _I_ was the bad guy for not being nice. Well, excuse me for being cautious.

Bending out my frustration was almost helping until Aang came along and shattered it.

"Zuko's making tea. Do you want some?"

It was a perfectly innocent question asked by a perfectly innocent person, but my response was venomous and blunt anyway.

"I don't like him."

Aang rolled his eyes. People were doing that lately whenever I talked about Zuko.

"I know you don't, but do you want some tea? He said his uncle taught him how to make really good tea while they were living as refugees in Ba Sing Se. Apparently, they even owned a tea shop in the Upper Ring." He paused, leaning against the doorframe. "He asked what your favourite kind was."

"Whatever. I don't want any."

Aang sighed and came to sit with me.

"Katara, I know that Zuko's hurt you, but he's really making an effort to be your friend and you keep turning him down."

I ran a hand through my hair, which I had pulled over my shoulder.

"I know, I know. I'm being unreasonable and I should accept him because he's _changed_ and he's good now, but I can't. It's like every time I look at him, he's just a reminder of what happened in Ba Sing Se. I can't bear to see you die every time I see him."

I looked down and realized that his hands were on mine and that only made me feel worse because how could anyone kill Aang? Azula really was a monster.

"Oh, Aang," I threw my arms around his neck and spoke into his shoulder. "I'm sorry, but I just can't."

"Look, Katara, I'm not asking you to marry him; I just need you to stop trying to make him cry." –somehow, Aang managed to make me laugh- "I care about both of you so much and I think everyone would be happier if you just try to be nice." He turned his head and whispered into my hair, "Can you do that for me?"

"I'll try –but only because you're my favourite."

We sat like that for a while, Aang making slow, smooth circles on my back before being rudely interrupted.

"Um –ew." Sokka took a ripping bite out of his jerky, ignoring our glares. "I know you're the Avatar and all, but could you get off my little sister?" He made little shooing gestures with his hands.

Sokka yelped as he took a water whip to the rear end.

So I ended up sitting next to Aang in a big circle as Zuko passed out his tea. I tried not to make a sarcastic comment about his stupid joke, if only for Aang's sake.

"It's a lot funnier when Uncle tells it."

"Maybe that's because he _remembers_ the whole thing."

Ah, well –sarcastic nice is better than a death threat.

I couldn't stop Aang from drinking his tea, but I made sure to leave mine untouched, turning cold on the temple floor until Zuko was forced to dump it out to clean his cup.


	2. Chapter 2

We left the old man crying on the ground. He was pathetic and sad and alone, but I didn't feel any pity for him. How could I? He deserved everything he'd gotten.

Terrible images of him and my mother and the man I'd blood-bended filled my head as I tried to sleep, exhaustion finally catching up with me in the back of Appa's saddle.

I could see what would have happened, I'd wanted to happen, if I hadn't stopped the spikes. For a moment, I wished I had done it; I was ashamed to have my hands clean of this monster's blood.

And again I could see the look on my father's face as he pulled back the curtain and began howling and sobbing. It was so scary to see the strongest and bravest man I'd ever known break down.

Even Bato was crying as he restrained me and Sokka, still too small to break out of his grip, too small to see our mother's body. But I saw anyway, when the wind started throwing a tantrum too, horrifying and black and not my mother. I couldn't remember anything except screaming and thrashing against Bato until the next morning, when her body had been wrapped and blessed and released into the ocean. Gran-Gran fastened something around my neck, smooth and soft and heavy in the front.

"You need to be strong, Katara," she had said, wiping the tears from my cheeks. "You need to be strong for Daddy. If he sees you crying, then he will remember to be sad and _he_ can't be strong for you and Sokka."

But even with justice available right in front of me, a flick of my wrist away from me, I couldn't do it. So much for strength.

"You must think I'm weak," I grumbled to Zuko, who was steering Appa. I sat up, not bothering with trying to sleep anymore, and leaned over the edge of the saddle to run my hands through Appa's fur. "Poor little Katara can't even kill a monster. I'm pathetic."

"I don't think you're weak," he said loftily, not looking away from the horizon. "I'm starting to think that Aang was right –maybe this was better than killing him. I mean –do you feel any better?"

_Oh, great. Zuko wants to know how I feel_. I bit my tongue, holding back my sarcasm –it was time to accept it: Zuko wasn't the enemy.

"Honestly? I don't feel any better. My mother's still dead at his hands and he's still walking around."

"It didn't help to confront him?" He still didn't bother turning around to face me, so intent on keeping Appa going the right way _as if Appa needed directing,_ so I leaned against the saddle and we sat back to back.

"I guess it did. I mean, he's not just some nameless killer anymore. He's human and can be beaten just like the rest of us."

"That's what I've been thinking would have happened; I mean, I didn't have to kill my father to humanize him."

Zuko was always talking about his dad, but up until this point, if I had cared at all _which I absolutely had not_ I had pushed it from my mind. Or, I realized with a twist in my stomach, I had made some scathing comment about it.

"What's your deal with your dad anyway?"

_Now, _he turned around and I met his raised eyebrows –well, eyebrow- with and expectant expression.

"You haven't heard?"

"The world doesn't revolve around you, Princey."

He blushed and looked back forward.

"Toph knew," he muttered, "she asked to touch my scar."

What did Zuko's scar have to do with the Fire Lord?

"Toph's a noble, Zuko. She's been educated to know all the world's nobility. Don't worry, Toph won't tell. I heard her yelling at Sokka and Aang. She said it's none of their business and that you'll tell them when you wanted to."

"Oh," he almost smiled. "They can know –I thought everyone knew. I've been called out by an Earth Kingdom… commoner before."

I rolled my eyes; _"commoner" isn't any better than "peasant," idiot._

"Well, obviously Aang, Sokka, and I have been stuck in our respective blocks of ice," I closed my eyes and took a breath. I tried to speak empathetically. "Come on, Zuko. What happened?"

"I was thirteen and forced my way into a war meeting and I spoke out of turn. That was an act of disrespect and to learn my lesson, I had to fight him in an Agni Kai."

"Zuko, that's horrible." I couldn't stop myself; even though I wasn't particularly fond of Zuko and I had no idea what an Agni Kai was, I knew that being forced to fight his father was terrible.

"I didn't do it. I couldn't fight him –he was my _father_. He saw that as weak, so as punishment, he burned my face and told me I was banished until I captured the Avatar."

"But, when you were thirteen," I thought out loud and did the math in my head, "that must have been –what? Three or four years ago."

"Yeah; I got that."

I brushed off his sarcasm. "Aang would have still been in the iceberg then. No one had seen him for a hundred years…"

"I know."

I turned back around and pulled my knees to my chest, trying to compress away the empty feeling in my stomach.

His _dad_ had given him that scar? I had always thought that he'd done something stupid and gotten himself hurt. I felt overwhelmed just hearing the story; poor Zuko, _never thought I'd say that_ to have lived it.

I wasn't going to cry. I _wasn't_. I shouldn't have felt guilty for being so mean to him, _he betrayed us before, he could have hurt Aang _but I did. I was a horrible person, _but so was he_. Well, we could be horrible people together.

Or we could be good people together. Maybe we could change; I could be nicer (like Aang had been asking the whole time) and, well, Zuko had already changed. I'd just been ignoring it.

Maybe after the war was over, I could share my family with Zuko. I thought back over the past week and remembered; Zuko and my dad talking weapons and philosophy, Zuko carrying Toph around on his back at her command, pretending to be grumpy but not quite hiding his smile, Zuko caving in and doing the Dragon Dance _please-oh-please-just-one-more-time-Sifu-Hotman_, Sokka leaning over and clapping Zuko on the back, grinning and offering to share his dinner because I had "dropped" the rest on the ground before Zuko could get any. I was already sharing my family with Zuko.

"Hey, Zuko?" I said softly and I think I startled him; he must have thought I was asleep.

"Yeah, Katara?"

"I'm sorry."

He didn't ask for what or do anything but nod and almost smile before turning around. I was nearly asleep when he finally spoke.

"Thanks. Me too."

"I know."


	3. Chapter 3

We seriously needed pots and I couldn't find any in the kitchen, so I found myself in the attic of the Fire Lord's beach house. The whole place was dusty and too hot, except for the foyer, which had footprints from Zuko's vacation here. Sokka was the only one who asked why the frames were empty.

_I burned them all._

I rolled my eyes and smiled; Zuko always found a way to blow things out of proportion.

But apparently, Zuko hadn't gotten all of them. I set aside the scroll with Zuko's baby picture to pull out a box labeled _Iroh_. I knew that Zuko had gotten his tea set from his uncle, so this seemed like the best place to look for cooking ware.

It took a second to remove the lid and release another puff of dust. Once it was open, I saw that the box contained more portraits, none of them as posed as I'd seen. It seemed like General Iroh had either taken up sketching or hired someone to make candid portraits.

They all had summaries written on the back: Lu Ten, aged fifteen, Zuko and the girls, Prince Ozai with new wife, Ursa, etc.

I tossed aside the pictures of Azula and the Fire lord with a scoff and dug deeper into the box. I felt nosy, sure, (it really was none of my business) but the lure of seeing Zuko's family without his editing was really too much.

I frowned, confused, as I pulled out another picture of Zuko, Azula, and her friends. Apparently, the gloomy one had just betrayed Azula and was in prison now. I turned it over.

_ Zuko, 12, and Azula, 10, and Mai and Ty Lee. Ozai away –left in charge. _

Azula and Ty Lee looked like they were sparring, but they were both laughing, while Zuko and Mai sat in the shade, hand in hand.

General Iroh had another picture of them. The weirdest thing about it wasn't that Zuko was smiling and waving his hands exaggeratedly or that Mai was smirking at him, one eyebrow tucked up behind her bangs, but that Zuko had a full head of hair, pulled up into a massive pony-tail, and Mai had ribbons tied into her hair.

They really _had_ been together for a long time.

I set it down next to the scroll; Zuko would probably want it.

Another portrait caught my eye. This one was more formal, with Zuko wearing armour that I could see the highlights on due to the paint. Seeing Zuko like this, happy and young and whole, made my hatred for the Fire Lord double in my gut.

I put the pictures neatly back into the box and shoved it back into place, then wiped the tear from my cheek.


End file.
